With COVID causing medical aids a lot of uncertainty, many chose to postpone their annual increases – either because they were unsure of what it should be or in an effort to “help” their members. But the inevitable catch up has now resulted in certain medical aids implementing 3 increases in a period of 17 months:
- 2022 – in September/October 2022
- 2023 – in April 2023 and
- 2024 – in January 2024
While medical aids have announced average increases, what is the true increase? As an indication we selected two mid-range plans each from Discovery and Momentum. As Discovery has reduced the savings percentage, we stripped the savings element from these plans to see what the real increase in the “risk related” contribution was which is shown in the table below:
So, ignoring all of the rationalisation and restructures it is apparent that the real increase in these plans has been approximately 27% over the past 17 months.
When you consider that Momentum has had the lowest average increases over the past 10 years it is very likely that the situation with other medical aids will be similar.
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